Just My Imagination
by Passionworks
Summary: Ozula Week Prompt Seven.  When she is hallucinating, she could be anyone, dead or alive.  When she is hallucinating, she would much rather be dead.  Rated for suggestive content.


**Author's Note: After a long day yesterday, I couldn't possibly write this, so I saved it for today.**

**Just a word of warning though, I **_**may**_** be slow on writing anything else for a while. For five days now, I have been plagued with excruciating pain, pain that could be stemming from an ovarian cyst. I'm genetically predisposed to them. Every female member on my mother's side has had a few of them. So, if I **_**do **_**have a cyst on my ovary, there is a chance that I will end up getting a few more in my adult lifetime.**

**Please enjoy this, even if it is a _weakly_ written entry. As I said, I wrote this while in extreme pain. I was slightly inspired by my Creative Writing short story, 'Tabula Rasa.' Instead of making Ursa the focal character of Azula's hallucinations, I decided to make it Ozai, for Ozula-ish reasons. Azula's feelings change only because hallucinogenic people are unstable when it comes to emotions.**

**I would like to thank TrueThinker for holding this! I certainly enjoyed participating!**

Prompt Seven: Confusion

_I can't tell you what it really is; I can only tell you what it feels like._

Just My Imagination

By: Passionworks

White is a color she hates. It is her nation's color of mourning. And Azula never mourns. Sadness is a stupid emotion to feel. It plagues you, consumes your conscience, and leaves you with nothing in return. Why mourn for those who are gone? Why cry when someone passes? The dead can't reciprocate, feel your pain. They are spirits, weightless embodiments of a former self.

Sometimes, Azula feels weightless, like her pain is oozing from her flesh and falling to the floor like a coat of fur skinned. And it gets her thinking: _why mourn for the dead when they have it so much better than we do down here?_

Life for Princess Azula has been nothing but torture in this white dungeon, but she admits freely that she rather enjoys her out-of-body experiences here, when she is hallucinating and basically gone from this world. When she is hallucinating, she could be anyone, dead or alive.

But the doctors can't see what she sees. And that is what makes them foolish. See, they want to cut her from her hallucinations like a baby untimely ripped from a mother's womb.

Today, the doctor, a tall, uptight man with a beard as white as the walls, is swiftly instructing her that her hallucinations are not real. _He is so cliché, _she thinks, _and just like the rest of them._ She is sick of being given the spiel on what is real and what is not. As of lately, she has been waiting for them to dish out a diagram just for her. But they can spend all eternity pointing their fingers and calling themselves _real. _And they can spend all the time in the world slapping at a picture of her mother and calling the woman a figment of a distorted imagination.

She will never break down and give in. Surrendering is for the weak of heart.

So, after getting nothing out of her, this particular doctor gives her a strange look and asks her a probing question about Ozai, something about her latching to him rather than Ursa.

Azula returns the look, and says, "I'm sorry?"

"Your father," the doctor repeats, "you were a _bit_ more attached to him, weren't you?"

"I was, yes," she replies, instantly giving the doctor her fullest attention. She feels the hair on her neck rise; she is growing defensive now. _How could he know?_

"Your father's name has risen from many of your recent bouts of insanity. You referred to him as your _husband _on many occasions. Your fantasies have been losing their consistency in recent days."

"Well," she admits tentatively, "Father often did tell me that we would marry after the war's end."

"Hmm," he replies, rubbing his beard with his massive, oddly-shaped fingers. "So, were you romantically inclined to Phoenix King Ozai?"

"Your version of romantic inclination may be different than mine."

"Then, how would_ you_ define your relationship with your father?"

Azula's eyes roam the walls. She notices a spot where the paint has chipped. The color is slightly yellowish underneath. A spider web resides in that corner.

"We had a rather healthy relationship. We were close enough…"

"But?"

She bites her lip and her eyelids squeeze shut. She clutches her bosom in a way that, to the attentive doctor, suggests concealed fear.

"…He lied to me."

"How did Ozai lie to you, Azula? And tell me everything you felt…"

…

She is swimming in another hallucination.

Ozai has his hands on her back, massaging her sore muscles. But all at once, his gentle touch turns violent, and his palms secrete flames. Her skin is burning, and her voice rattles. She can just sense the tears welling in her eyes; sense her pupils dilating in realization of her predicament.

He speaks to her in a garbled tone. Azula can swear that she is almost deaf, and she is straining to hear him. Ozai seems to despise the fact that she is struggling to understand his every word, and he turns up the heat of his flame.

"_Why did _you_ lie to me, Azula? Why? Must I punish you again?"_

Azula screams, and the shadows come flushing in.


End file.
